


Mission Improbable

by prumneos



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Canon Relationships, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Pines family focus, Stan tries, Stanuary, bless his heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prumneos/pseuds/prumneos
Summary: Stan only had one shot at his first date, and he wasn’t going to let something like being grounded stop him.





	Mission Improbable

**Author's Note:**

> For Stanuary, week one!

Someday, Stan would run the biggest scam this side of the Rockies, and when he did, it would be easier than the task that was set before him in the late spring of 1965.

The task, you see, was to lie to his mother.

Stan was almost fifteen at the time, and finally growing into his nose and shoulders. His ma’s new favorite joke was that she was glad Shermie was packed off to war, because that meant she only had to feed _three_ wild animals instead of four. (Stan’s most recent favorite joke was far too lewd to share with his mother, and had been worn out on Ford about three weeks before.) It was a year of turmoil in the world, but in the Pines household, things were more or less the same as they always were—Pops stern and taciturn, Ma theatrical and sharp, Stan as big a troublemaker as ever, and Ford the only one out of all of them worth being proud of.

But Stan had one thing Ford didn’t: A date with Carla McCorkle, the prettiest girl in the whole state. What he didn’t have was permission to leave the house, except for school and errands.  

Hence the nearly impossible task.

“Just tell her it’s for a date,” Ford said. “She’s been nagging at us to date; she’ll be ecstatic to let you go for one evening.”

“Uh, Earth to Brainiac, do you think I wanna ‘coincidentally’ bump into Ma at the cornerstore? And again at the drive-in? And again at—“

“Alright, alright. What about the parental shuffle?”

The parental shuffle was a classic: Ask Pops for permission, then when he told them to ask their mother, go ask her for permission; with a little luck, she would tell them to go ask their father. Since neither of their parents could make up their mind, that obviously meant it was up to Stan to make the responsible, well-thought-out decision, like he always had, historically. Ma put a stop to that loophole several years back by always leading with, _have you asked your dad?_ “Hell, that hasn’t worked for me in _years,_ what are you smoking? Ma’ll sniff that out in a heartbeat.”

Ford drummed his pencil on his notebook, clearly past the point of exasperated but still willing to spitball. Possibly because he knew Stan wouldn’t give up until they found some kind of solution. “Well,” Ford said, “what if we swapped out? I could pretend to be you and stay under the covers…”

“Yeah, put on twenty extra pounds and lose two digits and that _might_ work. No, it’s gotta be something good. Better than good. _The best._ I don’t wanna mess this up with Carla, Ford, you gotta understand, she’s just—she’s so pretty and funny and _gorgeous_ and—”

Stan kept going, not caring if he was repeating himself, because each repetition was truer than the last. And this was a good way to give Ford some time to think.

“You could reschedule,” Ford said, in a flat voice.

“Reschedule? On the prettiest dame in the whole world? Yeah, right. Look at me, Sixer, you think she’s gonna give me a second chance?”

Ford pivoted in his chair and cupped his chin in a hand. Looked him over critically, nodding to himself as he did.

“Don’t you dare,” Stan said.

“No, no, you’re right, this is very grave indeed. Quite frankly, I’m amazed she gave you this _first_ chance. Have you always been that pimply?”

Stan flopped onto his bed, sending up a cloud of baseball cards as he did.

“I’m kidding,” Ford said. “C’mon, you’re literally her hero. You’d have to puke on her to make her change her mind.”

“Do you think that’s gonna happen?”

“Only if she wants to go up a skyscraper.”

Stan moaned miserably and flopped around on the bed a few more times, so that Ford would know exactly how miserable he was. When that got boring, he sighed, sat up, and hugged the ladder to their bunkbed to check on Ford’s status. Disinterested, apparently, and back to scribbling. Fat lot of help he was.

“Wait a minute,” Stan said. “What about a study group?”

“You’ve been banned from every study group I’ve tried to form.”

“So? I’m not actually gonna _go,_ Birdbrain, I’m gonna _tell_ them I’ll go and then go to the movies. They’ll believe it coming from you.”

“And who else is going to be in our study group?  Benson? Lopez?”

“Crampelter’s flunking,” Stan said. “I bet he’d sign up.”

They looked at each other, both perfectly straight-faced. Slowly, Ford lifted his hand, and two fingers with it. Their deadpan expressions broke at the same time into peals of laughter. As they caught their breath, Ford dabbed at his eyes and began to delicately clean his glasses with the hem of his shirt.

“Well,” Ford said, “let’s do it, then.”

-

The key to a successful lie was to plant the seeds as early as possible. Breakfast the next morning was hectic, Ma throwing scrambled eggs on toast and kissing them as they headed for the door, but Ford still managed to squeeze in some concerns he had about an upcoming test. It wasn’t a lie – not exactly. When they trudged back home, still sweaty and tired from boxing practice, Stan mentioned that everyone in class had been progressively more panicked about said test—again, not exactly a lie.

Stan’s date with Carla was on Friday; by Thursday, Ford had convinced a couple of fellow losers to have a study group at the café down the corner. Frankly, Stan was glad he wasn’t actually going to go, because Snots was going to be there, and though he’d lost his iconic snot trail sometime in middle school, he still had an odd smell and liked to sit too close to people.

Ford had been adamant that the main event was up to Stan: He couldn’t lie worth a damn, and, after all, it was Stan’s date. During dinner on Thursday it was, then.

Ma had been up to her gills in calls all week, so it was frozen dinners ‘with a Pines touch’ for the third day in a row, the three of them huddled around the dinner table and Pops sitting in his armchair in the living room with the game on. Some things weren’t negotiable; some of those things were, thankfully, preferable.

Stan buttered her up first: Asked her all kinds of questions about her calls, laughed at all of her jokes, even told her that her hair was looking real good, today, though it looked just about the same as it always did. About halfway through, Ford pulled out a notebook and started scribbling in it, eating with his free hand and managing, against all odds, to not spill any of it on his paper.

When Ma had finished off her sides and was starting in on the main meal, Stan knew he couldn’t put it off any more. He cleared his throat. “So, Ma, I know I’m grounded for another week…”

There, sharp as a knife: Ma kept cutting up her turkey, casual as can be, but her eyes flashed as she spoke. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. Being grounded means _no beach._ ”

“No-no-no, you got the wrong idea! It’s just—that biology test is coming up, and Ford’s been helping me out and stuff, but, I dunno, he’s got a study group on Friday and…well…they can’t come _here,_ obviously, so I was wondering…y’know, maybe I could…it’s just gonna be for a few hours, I promise. And we’ll come home right away.”

“Uh-huh. And who else is gonna be in this ‘study group’ of yours? Not that Barbie girl?”

Ford groaned. “I told you, she dropped her purse, I was just returning it.”

“Because I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her—I heard her mother likes to scum it up around the docks, and y’know what they say about the apple not fallin’ off the tree.”

“The apple doesn’t fall _far_ from the tree,” Ford said.

“So? That’s what I said. Who’s in this study group, huh?”

“John Adelaide and Tommy.”

“Aw, Snots? He was always such a doll, I remember when you two were….”

Stan let her talk, nodding and smiling his most charming smile at every opportunity. Ford returned to his sketching.

Once Ma finished her story, she was almost done with her meal. “Well,” she said, “if it’s just those two…where’s this study group at?”

“The cupcake café,” Ford said. “At six. We should be done around nine.”

“A study session from six to nine? On a Friday night?”

Ford shrugged. Stan knew better than to elaborate; he mimicked Ford. Ma dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and sighed.

“Well,” she said. “Well,” she said again, in the tone of voice that suggested she’d really rather he take the question to Pops. “I don’t see the harm in it. But you’d better show me that test when you get it back, so I can stick it on the fridge. And it’d better be nine o’clock _sharp,_ you hear me? Or your father will check your shoes. You know he will, too.”

Stan struggled to keep his excitement out of his face. His heart beat so hard in his chest that he was sure she could hear it, even over the roar of the crowd coming from the living room. “Aw, thanks, Ma. You’re the best.”

She ruffled his hair; her smile was warm. “Don’t I know it.”

-

The date went off without a hitch—Carla loved the movie, and she even leaned into Stan and snuggled up when he put his arm around her shoulders. Stan wouldn’t remember what the movie was, but he’d never forget the pink skirt she wore, or the little scab on her left knee, or the smell of sweet pea that made him want to lean in and press a shaking kiss to her neck. She even kissed him goodbye, afterwards, her lips chapped and buttery from the popcorn and so perfect that Stan wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven.

He was walking on air when he caught up to Ford again, who was alone on the sidewalk at 8:50 and nursing a cup of something that Stan hoped didn’t have caffeine. Hell, forget that, he didn’t care what Ford was drinking – the most perfect girl in the world had _kissed him!_

Time to tell Ford _everything._

-

The next morning, Stan and Ford dragged themselves out of bed just in time for breakfast, which consisted of the most delicious food Stan had ever eaten in his life. His good mood wasn’t even deterred by Pops, who growled that it seemed pointless for a blockhead like him to go to a study group, or by Ma picking him as the designated victim for helping her with the dishes.

“So,” Ma said, once the room had cleared and the dishes were piled in the sink, “how’s Carla doing?”

Busted.


End file.
